This absurdist, experimental troupe's odd name was inspired by the title of a Google image of southwest Florida's Lakewood Ranch. Founded by three FIU theater grads during the height of the pandemic, LakehouseranchDotPNG found a surprisingly eager audience while working out of a second-floor rented space in Kendall. The group is committed to showcasing new work, much of which is written by the company's local resident playwrights. This season, they're abandoning Kendall for Miami Lakes, but they aren't straying from their commitment to innovative big-thinking: season three includes a horror play about creeper vines in West Virginia and a couple on the hunt for a cryptid known as Mothman.

Larger-than-life acting coach Violet Tcherkin is Miami's only accredited instructor of the Chubbuck technique. It's a 21st-century evolution of the widely studied Stanislavski method, which countless Hollywood A-listers have used to hone their craft. Tcherkin's students swear not only by her prowess as a world-class instructor of thespians but also by her empathy and insights into the human condition. While she helps her students prepare for the rigorous and highly competitive acting industry, she also offers them what some call a life-changing journey of self-discovery and personal growth.

Easily going from glam to gritty, Miami actress Lela Elam is nothing if not convincing. As Morgan Wright in Zoetic Stage's Clark Gable Slept Here, she originated the role of the Hollywood diva pissed to be called away from the Golden Globes to help clean up a murder mess. Elam seamlessly juggled multiple roles in the Actors' Playhouse production of A Rock Sails By. And she killed it as no-nonsense Coach Odessa Hicks in this season's The Girls of Summer with M Ensemble Company. The role, which hearkened the 1992 classic film A League of Their Own, had the actress leading a team of Black female baseball players in the '40s. Her range and convincing portrayals make it pretty clear that as an actress, Elam is herself in a league of her own.

Elijah Word has finesse. He can transform an iconic role that audiences have seen over and over again. Characters ingrained in our psyche are re-created entirely when he plays them on stage. Superstar Eddie Murphy defined James "Thunder" Early in Dreamgirls, but when Word played the role in Broward Stage Door's Carbonell-winning production, there wasn't an ounce of Murphy in the character. Likewise, there was not even a nod to Broadway's legendary Billy Porter when Word played the drag artiste Lola in Slow Burn's Kinky Boots. But where he truly proved his knack for originality was in Zoetic Stage's Cabaret. His master of ceremonies was born anew — a love child of a contestant in RuPaul's Drag Race and torch singer Billie Holiday.

Nilo Cruz left behind his homeland at nine years old when he boarded a Freedom Flight from Cuba to Miami in 1970. But the island would stay with him as he developed into a playwright. His play Anna in the Tropics was commissioned by the now-defunct New Theatre in Coral Gables. He was the first Latino to win the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2003 for the play, but Cruz never forgot where he got his start. For the 20th anniversary of the play last year, Cruz chose to direct the show for the first time himself at Miami New Drama. In March 2024, only a month after he wrote Sed en la Calle del Agua, he staged it at Miami Dade County Auditorium. Talk about commitment! He was also just named by the president of the Carbonell Awards as the 2024 recipient of the prestigious George Abbott Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts. Cruz is a national treasure, but lucky for local theater lovers, his roots remain in Miami.

Audiences got up close and personal with famed collectors Don and Mera Rubell's art when Miami New Drama artistic director Michel Hausmann launched his take of a night at the museum with The Museum Plays. He orchestrated six original ten-minute plays by six different playwrights. Each was tied to art in different rooms at the Rubell Museum in Allapattah. Ingenious and inventive, Hausmann had success with an unconventional venue in the past, albeit born out of necessity during the pandemic. He delivered Seven Deadly Sins, short plays by seven writers, in storefronts on Lincoln Road to keep audiences socially distanced. That endeavor made national news. The Museum Plays followed the same format, shuffling five different groups of 30 people throughout the museum at the same time. It was theater worthy of a museum.

GableStage's producing artistic director Bari Newport was hell-bent on bringing The Lehman Trilogy to South Florida for the theater's 2024 season. She wanted it here so badly that she sent a giant cookie to the rights-holders of the play to give them a nudge to accommodate her request. Maybe it was the cookie or her persistence, but it would be only the fifth time that the play — with just three actors telling the story of the Lehman Brothers bankers — would get a staging in the country. It was no small feat. The actors play between 50 and 75 roles in a show clocking in at three hours with two intermissions. Newport still has enormous shoes to fill after taking over GableStage in 2021, following the death of legendary founder and artistic director Joe Adler in 2020. But she's not one to shy away from a challenge. She found a way to create big theater in the company's small home, the historic horse stables of the Biltmore Hotel. While the show may have been about the fall of a dynasty, Newport proved she's queen of the castle.

There's nothing ostentatious about this South Beach music hall, despite the fact that world-famous architect Frank Gehry designed it. Inside is a comfortable 756-seat, in-the-round auditorium. Above the stage are five huge sails that help render pitch-perfect acoustics and allow for dreamy video projections. Comfort rules here — flip-flops and tank tops after the beach won't fly, but the dress code is definitely not opera gowns and tiaras. If you'd rather keep the beachwear, sprawl on a blanket outside for a free broadcast of the live concerts going on inside this classical music landmark.

They keep trying to take the Fillmore away from us. First, COVID-19 robbed us of a year and a half of shows. Then, from mid-2022 to the end of December 2023, the Fillmore was shut down for loading-dock renovations. It reopened in January with killer Elvis Costello and Mitski concerts, only for the Miami Beach City Commission to come and threaten to tear it down! When you walk into the lobby, you get goosebumps. You can just feel its rich and rewarding history. It would be a crime to raze the art deco theater that hosted everyone from Jackie Gleason to Madonna to Slayer. With Sting, Air, and Nicki Nicole on its fall calendar, make sure you enter its vaunted halls at least one more time before deep-pocketed developers actually take the Fillmore down.

In the heart of South Beach, long-running Kill Your Idol offers music fans just enough room to shake their asses while really taking in live acts. The place couldn't be more of a departure from the puddle-deep sensibilities of the touristy environs right outside the club's door. You'll be in fine company at KYI, with life-size statues of Bruce Lee and an astronaut hanging overhead, as well as a crowd that actually cares about the music. Depending on the night, you might hear balls-to-the-wall rock, avant-garde punk, drag-themed karaoke, or heavy, driving bass music. Run by Subculture Group (think Lost Weekend, DADA Delray, and Subculture Coffee), the venue is tight on space, but there's enough energy and devotion in it to fill a club five times its size.